Leadership: Instructor Materials

TeamSTEPPS Long-Term Care Version: Module 3

The Long-Term Care version of TeamSTEPPS adapts the core concepts of the TeamSTEPPS program to reflect the environment of nursing homes and other other long-term care settings such as assisted living and continuing care retirement communities. The examples, discussions, and exercises below are tailored to the long-term care environment.

Slide 3: TeamSTEPPS Framework

Leadership is the linchpin that holds a teamwork system together. Effective leaders create the climate that allows teamwork to flourish. The actions of leaders are intimately linked to the other three essential elements of teamwork:

First, leaders must constantly monitor the situation to better anticipate team members' needs and effectively manage the resources to meet those needs.

Second, leaders must communicate effectively with their team members to model appropriate behavior and reinforce and reward that behavior when it is exhibited by team members.

Third, leaders must foster an environment of mutual support by role-modeling and reinforcing the use of those types of behaviors.

Leaders also have a responsibility to support the resident care team.

Leadership has been identified by team researchers as an important piece in the teamwork skills puzzle. Salas and colleagues point out that leaders "impact team effectiveness not by handing down solutions to teams, rather by facilitating team problem-solving through cognitive processes (e.g., shared mental models), coordination processes (e.g., environmental monitoring, resource management), and the team's collective motivation and behaviors (e.g., performance expectations)."

Slide 4: Team Leader

Say:

Team leaders are well-informed team members who make decisions and take actions. Team leaders establish the goals of the team and help maintain its focus. There are two types of leaders.

The first type is the designated team leader. For a team to function successfully, a leader must be designated. This leader must possess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to achieve the established goals.

The second type is the situational leader. Designated leadership may change depending upon the situation. Situational leaders emerge at designated times, such as during care planning, and at spontaneous times, for instance, the first responder to an emergency.

In effective teams, any member of the team with the skills to best manage the situation can assume the role of situational leader. Once the situation has been resolved or the designated leader is ready to assume control, the situational leader again assumes the role of team member.

Ask:

Are there designated team leaders on your unit?

Is the role of team leader acknowledged and understood by team members?

How do leaders' roles change from situation to situation?

Can the roles of the designated leader and situational leader be better defined on your unit, work area, or department?

Slide 6: Resource Management Is...

Say:

Resource management is the active handling of resources available to teams. These resources can include time, people, equipment, and information. The goal of resource management is to make best use of all available resources to increase situation awareness among team members and decrease the risk of error.

Slide 7: Resource Management

Key Point: Resource management is a key component of team leadership.

Say:

This slide depicts the responsibilities of the core and the coordinating team leaders in managing resources. Management of resources within the department and across teams is primarily a function of the coordinating team leader. The core team leader manages resources within the team.

Some methods of resource management may include:

Determining available resources and requirements.

Prioritizing tasks that need to be completed.

Collaborating within or across teams to develop a plan for the use of resources.

Anticipating potential problems with the plan.

Revising the plan as necessary.

Ask:

How do your unit, work area, or department team leaders handle the items listed on this slide?

What has been effective and what has not been effective?

Examples:

Consider a situation in which a nursing assistant calls out sick on a 60-bed unit. Due to the illness of the nursing assistant, the unit is working with eight nursing assistants instead of the usual nine:

Who is responsible for securing the replacement nursing assistant for the shift?

How are the nursing assistant assignments redistributed so that the workload is optimally distributed between teams or people?

Are there additional staff that can assist with nonclinical tasks? How are they contacted?

Has an "on-call" replacement nursing assistant been secured for tomorrow's shift as a contingency plan?

Slide 8: Delegation

Say:

Delegation is a method of redistributing tasks or resident/nursing assignments. Delegation can occur within and between teams and be utilized across all role groups depending on the task requirements. There are four steps to the delegation process:

Determine what to delegate:

Consider priorities, work requirements, and availability of resources.

Slide 11: Team Events

Slide 12: Briefs

Briefs are held for planning purposes, which is sometimes referred to as a team meeting.

The designated team leader is responsible for organizing a 3-5 minute brief to discuss essential team information. The following information should be discussed in a brief:

Team membership and roles—who is on the team and who is the designated team leader.

Clinical status of the team's residents—the current condition, plan of care, and schedule of each resident assigned to the team are reviewed.

Team goals, pitfalls, and barriers—what is to be accomplished and who is to do it.

Issues affecting team operations—resources normally available that may be restricted during the current shift.

Performance goals are an intrinsic part of the team's purpose. Successful teams measure their effectiveness in terms of goal achievement. Performance goals are typically established during the team brief. The designated team leader facilitates the process, and team members actively participate to establish both clinical and team work goals.

Do: Play the video by selecting the director icon on the slide.

Discussion:

Who is the team leader?
Gayle Patel, the nurse manager. She reviewed the activities of the day and highlighted the clinical status of one resident who was found wandering during the night, which was a change for this resident.

Did the team develop a comprehensive plan for Mrs. Smith?
Yes. The nurse manager instructs the nursing assistant in the plan of care for Mrs. Smith. The nursing assistant is to watch her and encourage rest periods.

Did the team address contingencies?
Yes, the nurse explained that the resident may have an infection brewing and to encourage fluids.

Key Point: Planning is an important first step in understanding who is on your team, what needs to be done, and any issues that need to be resolved or considered in order to operate.

Slide 14: Briefing Checklist

Say:

Similar to a preflight checklist used in aviation, during a brief, the team leader should cover the items on the checklist. As in aviation, the briefings before flights provide the ideal forum for building a team dynamic that allows everyone to work together when carrying out routine tasks and when tackling unexpected problems.

Briefs serve the following purposes:

They clarify who will be leading the team so that others know to whom to look for guidance.

They open lines of communication among team members, ensuring that everyone can contribute their unique knowledge base to the task, and thereby set the tone for the upcoming day or shift. Protocols, responsibilities, and expected behaviors are discussed and reinforced so that possible misunderstandings are avoided.

They prepare the team for the flow of the shift/day/event, contingency plans, and the means for resolving any unusual circumstances.

By delineating expectations, they reduce disruptive or unexpected behaviors.

Ask:

Have you participated in a brief? Did the items on this checklist occur? If not, what was not done?

Slide 15: Huddle

Say:

The huddle is a tool for reinforcing the plans already in place for the treatment of residents and for assessing the need to change plans. It serves as a tool for developing shared understanding between team members of the plan of care. It also provides team leaders with an opportunity to informally monitor resident and unit-level situations. In other words, it is a formal way of checking in and updating the team.

Information will change over time and that will require monitoring and updating of the team. Note that a sudden increase in the activity level of an individual or the team indicates the need to reevaluate workload status. Workload distribution may need to be adjusted on the basis of this information.

Information updates within the team should occur as often as necessary. Updates can take the form of a huddle at the nurses' station or can occur between individual team members whenever new information needs to be shared.

Example:

The second shift team working together on the secured dementia unit has been reporting gastrointestinal symptoms for multiple residents. During a huddle, the team leader identifies that most of the residents are sick. She informs the team that infection control and housekeeping have been alerted and dietary will be delivering extra fluids to the unit. The team is informed that the evening meal will be restricted to in-room dining only and group activities have been canceled. She checks in with how the team is feeling and reviews the symptoms to monitor.

Do: Play the video by selecting the director icon on the slide.

Discussion:

What event necessitated the need for the huddle?

The nurse manager instructed the nursing assistant to encourage fluids in case there was an infection.

What key information was shared in the huddle?

The resident did not accept the drinks offered and ate only a small portion of her breakfast. Also, that she has a cough and is not acting like herself.

Key Point: Huddles provide team members with an opportunity to update each other on emerging or significant changes in the status of the environment so all team members can adapt appropriately.

Slide 16: Debrief

Analysis of why the event occurred, what worked, and what did not work.

Discussion of lessons learned and how they will alter the plan next time.

Establishment of a method to formally change the existing plan to incorporate lessons learned.

Debriefs are most effective when conducted in an environment where honest mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities. Debriefs should be the subject of a brief (about 3 minutes or less) team event typically initiated and facilitated by the team leader. Debriefs are most useful when they relate to specific team goals or address particular issues related to recent actions of the team. Debriefs also maintain effectiveness by not assigning blame or failure to an individual.

Although the debrief is meant to be a process improvement tool, at times it may be necessary to conduct a complete process review and system redesign if the same issues or events continue to reoccur. These recurring issues may be identified during a debrief and could then be mapped out and assessed at a designated time in the near future.

While you strive to have a flexible and adaptive team, be cautious of creating workaround processes to accommodate certain issues.

Slide 20: Facilitating Conflict Resolution

Say:

Conflict is inevitable and can be caused by differences in clinical knowledge, work approaches, values, opinions, or personality. Resolution of conflict is necessary in the delivery of safe, quality care. Leadership skill in conflict resolution can enhance team effectiveness and performance. An effective team leader does not allow interpersonal or irrelevant issues to negatively impact the team.

Slide 21: Team Formation Video—Optional

Say:

Now that we've discussed the importance that leadership plays in creating positive teamwork outcomes, let's watch the entire case of Mrs. Smith under the care of a team that utilizes effective and timely leadership strategies, including:

Briefs.

Huddles.

Briefing Checklists.

Conflict Resolution.

Debrief.

Do: Play the video by selecting the director icon on the slide.

Additional Content: Sub-Acute Care Team Success video is also playable from this slide.

Slide 23: Leadership

Say:

Within this module, we identified some barriers to effective leadership. Some tools and strategies were introduced to overcome these barriers. The outcomes of effective leadership are a shared mental model, adaptability, team orientation, and mutual trust.

Effective leadership in teams results in:

Increased mutual trust.

Better developed common understanding among team members through information sharing.

Quicker adaptation by the team to changing situations through an improved ability to predict and anticipate.

Better utilization of resources—more likely to have resources when needed through planning.

Increased ability to learn from situations in resident care.

Improved climate of teamwork developed through praise, encouragement, feedback, and empowerment.

Leaders have an impact on team effectiveness by ensuring that all changes in information are shared and understood by team members. They also ensure that teams and team members have the resources necessary to perform the task required.

Leaders must ensure that information sharing, monitoring, helping, and other team actions are taking place by reinforcing shared mental models and by modeling actions for team members. Leaders must provide team members with the appropriate human and material resources (e.g., team member with proper skills) to perform. Facilitating team actions aids in the development of shared mental models, while managing resources ensures that teams can be adaptable when necessary.

Key Point: Team leaders must ensure information is being shared, all team members have the resources they need to do their job, the situation within the work environment is continually monitored, and appropriate behaviors are modeled and reinforced across the team.

McGrath, J. E. "The Influence of Quasi-Therapeutic Relations on Adjustment and Effectiveness in Rifle Teams." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 65, 365-375. 1962.

Morgeson, F. P. "Leading as Event Management: Toward a New Conception of Team Leadership." Poster session presented at meeting of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, St. Louis, MO. 1997.